Kia Joorabchian's decision to take to the airwaves at the weekend to defend the resignation of Mark Hughes from the Fulham manager's job after one season at Craven Cottage did his client few favours. The agent's description that the timing coinciding with vacancies at Villa Park and Stamford Bridge had been "an unfortunate circumstance", his testament to Hughes's sincerity and portrayal of him wanting to be fair to Fulham instead of staying and "looking over his shoulder" at bigger jobs, made one think, in Clement Attlee's unimprovable rebuff, "a period of silence on your part would be welcome". It is usually better not to jab an open wound with a stick.

Hughes is not the first manager to feel his club cannot match his aspirations, though he is unique in phrasing his desire to trade up as wanting "to further my experiences". It was a curiously neutral valediction, one that hinted at his ambition and self-worth without being as blatant as his agent. No mention there of using Fulham as a stepping stone, of giving his CV a revitalising year in rehab, before returning to his true level. But if there were any illusions, Joorabchian's guileless spinning shattered them.

Still, there was always a ruthlessness about Hughes as a player, a magnificent rampaging forward with a peerless technical mastery of the volley. Barcelona fans called him El Toro, the bull, when he moved there in the summer of 1986, a transfer his Manchester United team-mate Norman Whiteside said, when news leaked before the end of the season, sent the fans "berserk".

Both youth-team graduates suffered the fate of most homegrown products back then of the board's reticence to reward them as generously as the players who were bought in. Whiteside turned down a £1.5m move to Milan in 1983 but Hughes took the board's willingness to sell as a sign of their lack of commitment and stayed away for two years.

When Sir Alex Ferguson bought the striker back after a season at the Camp Nou and another on loan with Bayern Munich, he said he saw it as "repaying the fantastic loyalty of our supporters by restoring one of their heroes to them". It was a different Hughes that returned. In a chapter of his autobiography he says he had regrets; he wrote of the players' liquid team meetings in the Four Seasons hotel in Wilmslow during his first spell and how he earned the nickname "Lager Legs". From 1988 onwards it was always "Sparky".

In seven years he earned two league titles, two more FA Cups and, having rounded the Barcelona keeper Carles Busquets, scored a marvellous goal from the tightest of angles to win the 1991 Cup Winners' Cup against the Spanish club that sold him.

He scored spectacular goals, terrorised defenders with his aggression and went over the top when the boots were flying, such as the time he pulverised David Tuttle's testicles during an FA Cup tie against Sheffield United. As a forward he combined brute force and subtle skill to a devastating effect, which made him at his peak the majority of top-flight central defenders' most-feared opponent. All the while he remained diffident off the field until the kick-off transformed him.

He has taken that reserve into management, often appearing foreboding on the touchline. He rejuvenated Wales, stabilised then improved Blackburn and did a lot of important groundwork at Manchester City before he was ditched in December 2009 with the lack of class for which Garry Cook was becoming renowned. That sacking, Hughes said, taught him never again to compromise his values. Perhaps it also taught him to stick it to them before they stick it to him.

The unusual element of the resignation if we take it at face value is that he has nothing lined up. It is so abnormal an act that conspiracy theories are bound to flourish. Others before him, such as Ron Atkinson in switching from Sheffield Wednesday to Aston Villa, Mike Walker in joining Everton from Norwich, Mark McGhee with two moves in 12 months from Reading to Leicester and on to Wolves, or George Graham from Leeds to Tottenham, have followed the more traditional route and ended up with the perpetrators derided as mercenaries and Judases. Yet while a few Fulham fans have used those epithets for Hughes over the past week, the more common view is one of complete bafflement.

He has never looked the type to chase rainbows so you cannot help feeling that his resignation is all part of a grander design. Fulham supporters can console themselves with the appointment of Martin Jol, the man the club wanted 12 months ago, and Hughes will take solace that he is now out of the spotlight and able to "further his experiences" relatively free from rancour. Jol and Fulham gave him that leeway, though, not Joorabchian and his hilarious appeals to honour.